


The Rain Behind The Thunder

by obstinatrix



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - World War I, Displacement, M/M, Sensory Deprivation, Temporary Blindness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-26
Updated: 2017-08-05
Packaged: 2018-12-07 05:26:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11616828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/obstinatrix/pseuds/obstinatrix
Summary: The war is over. Garak will soon be free to go home, but the thought doesn't please him as it should. Stranded in a British field hospital on the wrong side of the Lines, Julian Bashir's voice is his only anchor to reality.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I was suddenly gripped with the desire to see Elim Garak as a disillusioned WW1 German aviator. I don't know.

"That's it," said Dr Bashir, close to Garak's ear. "Eleven o'clock. Congratulations: we've survived." 

His voice was warm, wry. Before, Garak would have called it a knowing voice, that of an older man, but they were all older now, even the boy in the next bed who cried in the night, helplessly. Outside, it was raining. Garak could hear the weight of it rushing the windows, the wind whipping through it. He tipped back his head against the pillows and sighed.

"How very lucky we are."

His English was certainly improving. He'd learned it at school, of course, but there hadn't been much occasion to practise it until, after three years defying gravity and the gods, he'd lost control of his Albatros over the Lines. The humilitation of it still stung worse than the ache in his ribs (four broken on impact).

"Somebody shot off your propeller, Garak," Dr Bashir had told him, very reasonably.

"Yes," Garak said, "but I let him get close enough to do it, did I not?"

There had been no answer to that, of course. There was nothing to be said against perfect truth.

Sometimes he busied himself in picturing the doctor's face. He hadn't much to go on -- the scent of him, cologne and English tobacco, and the sound of his voice. Even to Garak's unpractised ear, it was an educated voice, with those very particular inflections bred into English boys at expensive public schools. At Heidelberg, Garak had known a boy like that: German father and English mother, spoke English like a radiogram and German like a peasant. Fair haired, slender. Garak had cut his perfect face on the point of his rapier and taken the boy afterwards to bed, where they'd made love urgently, with the clinging intensity of youths knowing their sheltered schoolboy world was coming to its end.

That had been fifteen years ago. How little they had known. Garak could picture the boy's face as clearly now as if it had been yesterday, his long limbs outstretched in the green grass; _ah, Germany..._

Was the doctor tall like that, slender? Did he smile, still, after everything he'd seen? One day, Garak was told, he might yet see for himself, when the bandages came off, if all had gone to plan, but that day could be weeks away yet, and in the meantime he had nothing to do but wonder.

Bashir brushed his shoulder, carefully, as if for fear that Garak might be startled. Hardly: Garak could feel the shape of the doctor's body at his side, every fine hair on his skin lifting in response to his presence. Still, it was nice to be considered.

"What will you do?" Bashir asked, softly. "When you get out of here, I mean. Where is home for you?"

And wasn't that a loaded question. Garak laughed. The doctor's hand was warm on his shoulder, and he shrugged off the foolish desire to reach up and cover it with his own. Careful, Garak.

"That," Garak said, "is something I will need to ascertain, Dr Bashir."

He fancied the corner of Bashir's mouth curved up in question, but Garak knew better than to elaborate where conciseness would serve. He closed his eyes and listened to the rain go on.


	2. Rank Amateurs

The NCO who arrived at noon with the incomings wasn't in much of a celebratory mood. There were three men visible in the field ambulance when he swung himself out of it: a far smaller number than on previous days, certainly, but how bloody awful, Bashir thought, to have been wounded in the last five minutes of this blasted war. He moved forward, hoping there was nothing too serious in here, no maimings or disfigurements. 

"Speak English, do you?" barked the NCO. He was thickset, late thirties, with a heavy Cardiff accent. The man himself was new to Bashir, but alas the attitude was not. He'd once been berated by a colonel, no less, for being incorrectly dressed, the regimental flash of the Royal Welch "not appropriate for Indian Army, lad." Bashir had been Royal Welch since the day he enlisted. 

"They thought so in Carmarthenshire where I went to school," Bashir said wearily, reaching for his pen, "but what do they know about it, eh? I can bluster through in Welsh, if you'd rather." 

The NCO, with that city-boy accent, probably hadn't a lick of Welsh. It crossed Bashir's mind to trot out a few phrases just to irritate him further, but he restrained himself as the man frowned and shook his head grudgingly.

"Sorry, sir." 

"Mm." Bashir gestured for the clipboard and, when it was put into his hand, scanned the mercifully short list of names and companies. None were listed as urgent cases. "Is this the last of them?" 

"Think so, sir. Flesh wounds." 

"I think we can handle that." Bashir signed the chit and slotted it into the crevice in the ambulance door, tucking the pen back into his pocket. "All right, Sergeant. Let's get them inside." 

Normally, there would have been at least two or three Tommies fulfilling the role of hospital orderlies, unloading the patients and rolling the gurneys into the ward, but today was not a normal day and, Bashir reminded himself, it was time for them all to get used to an entirely different version of normality. _Normally_ there would have been more incoming wounded than would fit in a single ambulance. Bashir wasn't above dragging a gurney himself, although unlike the sergeant he hadn't the shoulders for it. 

The metal frame creaked and the wheels rattled as Bashir pushed, trying to work out the best place, physics-wise, to position oneself when dragging a grown man single-handedly. The soldier on the trolley caught his eye and grinned. 

"Sorry I'm so damn heavy, doc." 

He was a slip of a boy, nineteen at the oldest, fair hair and narrow shoulders, East London accent. He looked as if the minimum height requirement might have been fudged a little on his behalf. His smile reached his eyes, and Bashir smiled back, glad of his good humour. 

"What else can they expect when the rations are so irresistible?" 

"Good point!" 

Safely inside the ward, Bashir shoved the gurney up against the wall and leaned all his weight heavily on one end of it to swing it into position. The nurse came in and the soldier caught his eye and grinned again as she took hold of his shoulders and lifted. Bashir tried to look disapproving as he took the boy's feet -- carefully; he'd a leg wound -- and helped, but it was a poor effort. In his peripheral vision, Bashir noted the sergeant pushing a second gurney into the ward and then turning back, presumably to fetch the third one. 

"You'd better not cause me any trouble, soldier," he warned, wishing he'd paid closer attention to the duty list and noted the boy's name. The soldier, as if reading his mind, stuck out a hand and grasped Bashir's firmly. 

"Nog," he said. "Don't bother with what it says on the form; Nog's enough." 

It wasn't the strangest nickname Bashir had ever heard from a soldier. He had just opened his mouth to reply when Garak said lazily, from two beds away, "The first thing you should know about Dr Bashir, Nog, is that he likes his peace and quiet. Isn't that right, doctor?" 

Bashir bit back a smile. He caught himself doing so often where Garak was concerned, although he couldn't say why -- after all, Garak couldn't see his face anyway. "Peace and quiet, with you around?" 

Nog was looking over with interest, his expression now one of curiosity -- the accent, of course. Garak was extremely well-spoken, but that was exactly what gave him away: the precision of his consonants and the careful placement of his words marked out his English as a second tongue. 

"Mr Garak is an aviator," Bashir explained. "He just so happened to come down right in our backyard, which is why we have the pleasure of his company." 

There had been a few German visitors to Bashir's ward over the years, all of them pilots. Ordinarily, they would stay here until they were well, or well enough, and then would be shipped off to the nearest POW camp. Now that the war was over, the camps were being emptied and the soldiers relocated. Bashir realised he wasn't entirely sure what would happen to Garak when he was well enough to leave. He'd go home, presumably, wherever that was. It was never easy to get a straight answer out of Garak. 

"You make me sound quite the illustrious hero," Garak observed dryly. "What an impression I must have made, nosediving into your shrubbery like a rank amateur." 

Nog was watching them closely, pale blue eyes flickering back and forth between the two of them. This, Bashir realised wryly, was why he fought so hard to conceal his smile when Garak sparred with him like this. It wasn't Garak's observations that worried him, but the thought of what onlookers might think. Wordplay with the enemy… 

...but they weren't any longer, were they? Garak was just a man like so many others, press-ganged into this circus against his will. It wasn't Bashir's fault that this brilliant mind, which engaged so wonderfully with his own, had been born and shaped in -- Prussia or somewhere. He would refuse to feel guilty. Yes: there was nothing to feel guilty about, which didn't explain the continued twist in his gut when he thought of Garak and his own pleased response to that voice. 

Perhaps he simply had to get used to the change in circumstances.

"On the contrary, Mr Garak, I'm quite sure you excel in all you do. Everybody is susceptible to an accident from time to time." 

He laid a reassuring hand on Nog's shoulder and twitched back the blanket, examining the leg wound. He was pleased to find it beautifully clean, a bullet right through the flesh of the calf. It would need to be packed and cleaned regularly, and there might be muscle damage, but he would certainly walk again. Bashir tried to focus his attention on rebandaging it and ignore the urge to look up at Garak's face, watching for a change in expression. 

"I don't know how you were brought up, doctor, but in my family, there was never much room permitted for accidents," Garak said. The tone was arch, and when Bashir glanced up ( _damn_ him), the shift in Garak's forehead suggested that his eyebrows were arched to match. Bashir bit the inside of his cheek. _Why_ was it that these near-hostile remarks from Garak never failed to make him want to smile? He couldn't understand it. It had been that way from the moment Garak arrived, curt and sarcastic and quietly aloof, and his brusque remarks had only spurred Bashir to thrust back and then wait for Garak's returning parry. 

"One didn't dare be anything less than perfect around my father, I can assure you." Bashir squeezed, testing the extent of the damage to Nog's calf muscle, and threw him a reassuring smile when the boy gasped in discomfort. He stepped back and covered him again with the blanket, then crossed to the next bed to attend to their other visitor. The third man had been wheeled into the next ward, where there were more free beds. 

"At Heidelberg," Garak began -- and stopped. Bashir had to look up at that; Garak was biting his lip, as if quite literally holding in the rest of whatever the sentence would have been. Bashir smiled, slow. 

"You're worried you might give something away. Well, mysterious Mr Garak, you needn't worry -- I knew you were at Heidelberg already. I don't know why you'd think it could be kept a secret when you walk about with it written on your face." 

To Bashir's surprise, Garak laughed outright at that, clapping his hands together. "Oh, very good, doctor. You know the meaning of the scar."

Bashir was grinning as his hands moved efficiently over the other patient, mapping his injuries, checking the range of motion in his limbs. He _had_ been rather proud of that. "The edge of it just peeks out under your bandages. Very distinguished." 

"Well," Garak said, "in fact it isn't _only_ Heidelberg where the duelling scar is considered the mark of the man. It might have come from any number of universities, but indeed I was at Heidelberg, a fact I would never seek to conceal."

Bashir faltered. "Then --" 

"Never mind, doctor," Garak soothed, "I caught myself just in time." 

Bashir didn't need to look to know that Garak was smiling, that smug curve of his lips that meant he was feeling contentedly victorious. He looked anyway. Garak reclined on his pillows, his hands crossed in his lap, his hair jet-black against the pillowcase. His expression was one Bashir would have wanted to slap off any other face, but on this one it seemed to belong. What colour were Garak's eyes, Bashir wondered. Brown, probably, given the colour of his hair. Garak had been brought in already triaged and bandaged. Bashir had never really seen his face. For a reason he could not place, he longed to do so. 

"You are infuriating," Bashir said, and Garak nodded, almost a bow: _thank you, doctor_. 

The man was a menace, a born troublemaker, his secrecy aggravating, his thought processes confounding. Bashir couldn't fathom what went on in his head. He only knew he couldn't bear to think of the day Garak would be gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The 'flash' of the Royal Welch Fusiliers is a non-regulation item worn only by this regiment by special permission. It consists of five overlapping black silk ribbons (seven inches long for soldiers and nine inches long for officers) on the back of the uniform jacket at neck level. This is a legacy of the days when it was normal for soldiers to wear pigtails.


	3. Open Air

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a little bit.

"Four times around the grounds," Garak said, disgruntled. "That's what I was promised, anyway." 

"Didn't you get it?" Bashir asked absently, fiddling with the double knot in the laces of Garak's canvas shoe. Nurses would have done this a month ago, but they were disappearing day by day, called back to home duties. Field hospitals were a shrinking service. Whoever had tied this lace seemed to have done it as an act of war. 

"Four times round _something_ ," Garak muttered. One hand clenched and unclenched itself on his knee; Bashir could read in his posture that he disliked being unable to do these simple things for himself, more even than most men. "I suspect her of failing to go right out to the corners, Doctor. And she had a grip like a NAAFI." 

Bashir concealed a smile. He could well imagine the way Kira might hold Garak's arm -- professional, always, but no more kindly than absolutely necessary. "It's good that you want to walk further these days." 

Garak snorted. "The state of my legs was never the issue!" 

The knot came undone at last and Bashir exclaimed in gratitude. "Speaking of your legs, you can have them back now, if you like." 

"Most kind," said Garak curtly, pulling up his knees onto the bed. He moved more fluidly now than in previous weeks, but Bashir didn't miss the catch in his breath as he pulled himself back against the pillows. 

"Those ribs won't thank you for too much exertion," he warned dryly. 

He could swear Garak rolled his eyes. Something about the forehead gave it away. 

"Next time," Garak said, with studied levity, "perhaps you would accompany me on my perambulations, doctor? You could content yourself then that I wasn't subjecting myself to any more...exertion...than necessary." 

_Not_ protocol, said a voice in Bashir's head. Prisoner patients needed two nurse escorts and must not be outside with only one chaperone at any one time. A doctor must never remove himself from the hospital premises unless he is assured of his protection. 

But was Garak still a prisoner patient, after all was said and done? He didn't pose a threat to anyone, despite the low coil of awareness in the pit of Bashir's stomach that warned _caution_. What could come, after all, of a turn around the flowerbeds with a wounded man who couldn't even see? 

"All right," said Bashir's mouth, without permission from Bashir's brain, "Tomorrow evening, let's go out after dinner. I'll pick you up." 

They both smiled. "I very much look forward to it," Garak said.


End file.
